Vettel: “We're not fast enough but we'll come back stronger”

The German Grand Prix was not particularly satisfying for Sebastian Vettel who, in front of his home crowd, had to deal with a colorless performance from his car and Ferrari, only fifth and sixth at the finish line, over thirty seconds from the winner.

A moral slap for the four-time world champion who hoped to finish his home race on the podium. Analyzing the race, one thing that didn't happen in Germany is the change of pace between qualifying and the race, where Ferrari always gains a few tenths more on Sunday: "Usually in the race we are faster than in qualifying. If we look at today, however, this has not been the case. We weren't fast enough to get into the top four, so fifth and sixth place seemed like the best we could get today. We can't be happy but we have to accept it for now. We will improve the car but obviously it also depends on the improvement that the others make, but we must not hide the fact that we are not fast enough."

During the race there was also a small discussion with the track engineer, Ricciardo Adami, about the moment in which to stop for the last pit stop: nothing serious, the driver on the track manages to have better sensations than the engineer to the wall, but Sebastian's attempt was only to extend the life of the tires a little, also considering the fact that the undercut on Max Verstappen would have been quite complicated: "We had a new set of soft tyres, so the choice we would make was quite clear. We talked about it for several laps, we had to return, but I thought about staying out so as not to make the last stint too long for the tyres. It's probably my fault too because I gave up on trying the undercut but at that point I wanted to go as long as possible to have more rubber at the end. It was very difficult for me to understand how the race would develop and clearly it is much easier for those on the wall. We will have to re-examine this."

A Ferrari that has so far fallen short of expectations. We had to aim to fight with the Mercedes and, in the end, we were overtaken by Red Bull. It almost seems as if the car took neither steps forward nor steps backwards, it remained 'stationary', while the others improved. The three-week summer break will be used to try to recharge the batteries and find some solutions that can help the riders to be more competitive in the second part of the season. Vettel, however, does not hesitate to also criticize himself, claiming that both, however, will come back stronger together: "I think it's nice for all of us to have a break. The first half of the season didn't go the way we wanted, but we have to fight, that's what we're here for and that's what we'll do. Sure there are two weeks off, but everyone will try to find a way to improve. We have to work on ourselves and on all sectors, we know it. First of all looking at myself, in the first half of the season I had ups and downs, some small mistakes that cost us some points. Overall we need to do a better job as a team, there are a lot of things we need to understand and digest and now we have time to do that. We will come back stronger” concluded the German driver.

Gianluca D'Alessandro